Trust Me...

One of the times the Earlies were flying back from America there was a problem with the plane which led to a delayed takeoff. We sat on the tarmac for an hour, maybe more. We were young and still enthusiastic enough about aeroplanes for it not to be too much of a problem. Eventually the pilot came on the address system to tell us what had been going on. Some of the software routines hadn’t booted up properly or something, he told us that he’d had to turn the plane off and on again a few times to get everything working right. That put the shits up everyone, for a minute. Everybody was murmuring and mouthing to each other, “Does that sound okay?” “Does that work with planes?”

The pilot gave us the ultimate reassurance which has stuck with me to this day. He said, “You might be wondering if that’s okay but trust me, if there was anything at all wrong with this aircraft I would personally not be on it.” I liked that. He was telling us he wasn’t interested in dying today and was fairly sure this flight would be non-fatal. I relaxed, drank beer and sat back to watch a preposterously bad Hilary Duff vehicle called The Perfect Man.

It’s in the spirit of that pilot that I’d Like to tell you that I’ve got a new album out. Obviously no lives are at stake but I’d nonetheless like to convey to you that if this album were shit then I personally would not be releasing it. I wouldn’t even bother listening to it, life is short and music is bewilderingly plentiful after all. But here I am nonetheless with yet another album, I’m actually listening to it as I type this and I’m not ashamed to tell you I love it.

Christian Madden and the Enemy Chorus- Shinbone’s Revenge

I made the bulk of this album at the start of 2023, we had a couple of weekends in Clitheroe. Richard, Ben and Nathan came up for one of them. Barrie, Dan and Nathan again came the week after. We drank both times, the second weekend was when Charles was enjoying his coronation. I’m glad I missed that and made music instead. It’s bad enough being ruled over by an immensely powerful clique of inbreeds who believe they’ve been invested with magical powers by God himself and therefore require most of our land and shitloads of our money, without having to pretend I’m enjoying their “new hat” party. I don’t want Charles’ head on a stake or anything, I just think it’s a bit juvenile of us as a country to have kings and knights. Like we’re still into Dungeons and Dragons or LARPing. We had a good night anyway, maybe even got a little bit carried away. I sent Barrie home in something of a state, he now talks of “getting completely Clitheroed” as a useful yardstick for that special somewhere beyond the usually understood conditions of paralytic, blind drunk, arseholed or shitfaced. It’s like we did something for science.

There was a bit of a delay in mixing because Nicky moved to another country with all our equipment and we had to wait until he found a house that he could rebuild a studio in. If it hadn’t have been that though something else would’ve delayed it, something always does. There’s nothing too pressing though, these are organ instrumentals of the sort I always make and they haven’t lost relevance since 2023. They never were relevant but I still like them. They’re melodic and groovy, they feature great players who happen to be good friends (and some strangers to be fair). The titles have some obscure Burnley references here and there that I don’t think I need to explain do I? You all know Shinners, you all knew Jimmy Satan and you all watched with grim compulsion when Stoops was in flames as the locals ran topless in feral glee. The cover art is by Pete Fowler who did all the Super Furries stuff. It looks great.

And yes, that’s a tortoise on my head. Better a tortoise than a crown.

You should buy this one, I’d be over the moon if you did. It’s available on Bandcamp and from the Friendly Records shop. It’ll turn up in some other reputable record shops if all goes to plan. I’d like to think a few will show up at Piccadilly Records and the like. Maybe I’ll spot one in Elektron in Burnley, or Astonishing Sounds. That’d cheer me up no end. Buy it today as soon as you can and watch my pride swell. It’s a vanity project but then, most music is.

If you don’t like shelling out cash for late 40s layabouts and their instrumental musings there are digital links here, we all hate streaming but we all do streaming so I won’t hold it against you.

I’ll embed the Bandcamp version here though, I’ve outlined my reasons. Thanks for your time and attention, now have a dance.

John and Paul

Just when I was wondering if I’d ever have the need or inclination to read another Beatles book I went and read another Beatles book, and I assure you I regret nothing. John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs is written by Ian Leslie whose substack The Ruffian is probably my favourite on this platform. I actually pay for it, imagine that! I first started reading him, like everybody else, when he published his 64 Reasons To Celebrate Paul McCartney piece back in 2020. I’ve thought for a long time that Paul has suffered in the post-Beatles narrative with people thinking him boring, conservative, unimaginative, safe and friendly, as though he’s the band’s own in-house Cliff Richard. I’ve said it many times but the British people will only really understand what they had when he’s gone. That’s their problem though, not mine. I’m a Macca fan.

John and Paul uses the body of work the two principal songwriters in the Beatles created to illustrate the deep relationship that existed and persisted between them. It’s a relationship that he points out we don’t really have the language describe, not a romantic or sexual relationship but something more passionate and all consuming than the label ‘friendship’ implies. He takes many a Beatles song that you thought you had always understood the meaning of and shows how, whether they knew it or not, they were singing to each other, about each other or for each other. It’s a relationship that goes through a painful breakup without losing any of its obsessive intensity. The book is a tearjerker, even though you know that it’s headed towards a massive bereavement and unbearable heartbreak, seeing the whole thing unfold through lyrics you’ve known for your whole life at an instinctual level, like the sound of your own name, multiplies the emotional weight many times over. I love this book, I’d call it my favourite Beatles book but it doesn’t really mention George and Ringo an awful lot (for which he apologises at the end). It’s not a Beatles book really, it’s a dedicated John and Paul book, featuring the story within the story that we didn’t even realise needed to be told on its own. It did and it’s truly wonderful.

Some Questions

Some questions sprang to mind whilst I was reading this latest Beatles book, if anyone’s got answers I’d like to hear them. They’re not important questions though, I must stress that.

1. Did the Beatles ever make any reference to the Doors or display any awareness of them? Or vice versa? In all my reading around the Beatles and the Doors I’ve felt as though they each thrive in some parallel version of the 1960s where the other band doesn’t exist. Jim Morrison screams a lot and talks about shagging his Mum a bit, both things that Lennon showed an interest in too, so you can’t help but feel they might’ve gotten on.

2. Lennon liked 50s doowop and rock ‘n’ roll a lot so I started wondering if he managed to watch Grease before he died and whether he thought it was bollocks or quite liked it? I told you these were trivial.

3. I then started thinking about Lennon and films and wondered if he’d watched Star Wars? It’s hard to imagine. Everyone was banging on about space in the 60s and 70s but John and Paul didn’t really go for it did they? I suppose there’s Venus and Mars but we’re not talking “George Clinton landing a spaceship on stage” there are we?

4. Finally, after wondering whether the Beatles cared for science fiction almost directly after bringing John Travolta to mind, I wondered if the Scientologists ever tried to recruit a Beatle? I thought they might’ve had more than a fighting chance if they’d approached Lennon on the right day in the 1970s, Dianetics seems to be a logical next step after Transcendental Meditation and Primal Scream Therapy.

Like I say, they’re trivial questions, but feel free to weigh in…

---

Mien

I went to watch JM’s band MIEN at Yes in Manchester on Wednesday night and absolutely loved it, I can’t recommend it enough if you have the opportunity to catch one of their remaining few shows. It really is something of a supergroup, all the Earlies have long been fans of Rishi Dhir but this was my first time seeing Alex Maas on guitar and lead vocals and Robb Kidd on drums, both superstar players with chops and creativity. JM as always contributed completely original and thoughtful textures, simple but brilliant keyboard lines of the sort I’d never come up with. Give their latest album a do!

Me and Rishi were reminiscing after the gig about the fact that he brought his wife to Burnley on their honeymoon and watched an Uptown Band gig at the Talbot. I’m not sure what she thought about that but Rishi loved it, we took him to the Bridge after that and he said he couldn’t see by the end of the night. He also reminded me of this remote recording we did together in 2006 or so, a new tune for his then new band Elephant Stone called The Straight Line. The pair of us should probably make an unapologetic album of this kind of shit one day, it’s infectious.